Presented by Professor Angela Weisl, PhD – Professor and Chair Department of English, Coordinator, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Minor
This talk would consider the ways modern “medieval” places are constructed, whether intentionally trying to create a medieval world (such as television shows like the Quest, Game of Thrones, Vikings) by imposing their narratives on real medieval places (Burg Kreuzenstein, Dubrovnik, etc.), trying to recreate something medieval while keeping it consciously distant and modern (the Cloisters and other medieval museums), or places that create spaces (Graceland, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Field of Dreams, etc.) that become “medieval” in their ritual use and function. The stretch of time between the Middle Ages and now has significantly changed the field of specifiable relationships and structures, whether we take “structures” to mean social structures or architectural ones; the movements deployed and the economic, social, cultural, ideological, and theological capital of the past and present are also very different. As a result, the fantasies of medieval space are inevitably a strange blend that takes what we like about the present and projects it on the past, while simultaneously taking what we don’t like and removing that from the imagined past—a dynamic that can be read visually in the architecture of these spaces and how they present themselves to the modern world.